Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @01:02PM
from the tough-finding-a-fueling-station dept.

caffeined writes "Well, it looks like Honda is doing a real test of their fuel-cell car. A family in California is renting the car for $500/mo. Honda is charging them so that they take it seriously - an executive explained that if it were free they might not get the kind of feedback they want. If someone is paying for something and they're not happy - then you're going to hear about it. This is apparently the first fuel-cell car on the road anywhere in the world, according to Honda."

They need to try this in more than warm, sunny southern California. My sister has a Prius and loves it, though the battery
sometimes doesn't respond well to being parked outside overnight in sub-zero. You also have to wonder what cumulative
effect road salt ions will play. Seems the ions in the sea air in California like my 12v battery a lot, I do wonder how hybrids are
doing with their higher voltage.

Still, it's promising. I wished they gave us a little tip off on how the trial is going rather than all
the peripheral issues, but I suppose Honda wants to keep as much of that confidential as possible.

California isn't just a small strip of sunny beach on the west coast. I live in the valley and it is raining outside right now. It gets well below freezing in the winter and I often have to scrape the ice off of my windshield before work. It can get even worse if you head up into the Sierra Nevadas.

They need to try this in more than warm, sunny southern California. My sister has a Prius and loves it, though the battery sometimes doesn't respond well to being parked outside overnight in sub-zero.

That reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story I heard about some of the older (as in 1960s-era) Volkswagen cars. Apparently they were designed for Germany's climate, and in the considerably warmer American Southwest, some parts would expand at different rates and just not fit together.

more to the point, the air cooled volkswagon beetle engine was designed for cooler european climates. when people began driving them across the hot dry deserts of north america, the flammable bits on the engines (rubber, grime, etc.) would catch fire.

I actually do get the joke, but I feel it's worthwhile to point out that fuel cells combine hydrogen with oxygen to produce power and water. My understanding is that in cold temperatures, that water freezes and does nasty things to fuel cells. IIRC, Honda is one of the few companies to have produced a viable sub-zero fuel cell car.

Still funny to think "maybe they should road test this on Pluto, to see what happens if the fuel freezes..."

The Grandparent post is right in their sentiment. They need to test this in more than just sunny temperate california. It has nothing to do with how hydrogen reacts to extreme climates, but it has everything to do with how the Car reacts to extreme climates.

We have enough posts on how people like MS aren't testing their software enough, but now we criticize someone who thinks they should be testing more?:)

You might think Honda would do this, but be cautious. This is brand new technology, of course, and businesses love to cut corners in order to make it to market on time.

There are places in the United States where it gets seriously cold in the winter, the car batteries sit on top of a heating pad and are trickle charged constantly or they just will not be able to turn the engine over, the engines have either block heaters, or synthetic engine oil because normal mineral oils turn to jelly overnight. The parking meters have electrical outlets so drivers can plug in their cars while shopping. There are some places that are insanely cold where you start your engine in the fall

Yeah, say somewhere like... Pennsylvania. Now, if only we could find someone in Pennsylvania willing to do this sort of test... hmmm...

Oh, heck. For the good of the nation, I'll do it.

--- SER

P.S. For a low, low fee, I'm also available for testing the psychological effects of being given large amounts of cash; the long-term physiological effects of Segway use; and the ergonomics of ultra-high-end laptops.

Getting more out of ethanol than the fuels you used is easy: just use 1990s production techniques or better.

That means on the farm you have things like diesel tractors that get better use of the fuel, hybrid crops that yield nearly twice as much. Precision fertializer application so you don't waste it where the ground is fertil.

At the plant you use a dry milling process, your total return is about 167% of the energy input. Or you wet milling, but use all the other results from wet milling, and call e

Movie critic who doesn't have to pay to see films, or your friend who has to shell out hard-earned cash to see it? The movie critic will bring in all kinds of esoteric critical theory crap because they never actually directed a movie but always wanted to, and now they're just out to prove how much they know about the meta theory of film.

Music critic who doesn't have to pay to review an album, and in fact gets paid to write a review,

According to this article [boston.com] I read last Monday, Honda is already on its fifth iteration of FCX's. It's considered to be the most advanced hydrogen-fueled vehicle developed thus far by any motor company.

Some other tidbits in this article:

- the car has an ultra capacitor -- a non-chemical ''battery" that injects electrical power when demand is high. The ultra capacitor sets Honda apart from rivals.

They're trying to avoid the glowing review syndrome, and they specifically mention this in the article.If a reviewer gets something for free, they're more likely to think well of it than if they pay for it. Look at all the "hardware review" sites out there run out of someone's parents' basement. They don't generate actual useful information, it's just a giant web of marketing jizz about how awesome the newest ATI/Nvidia/whatever card is. That's great for PR, but not for the engineers who want to understand

That it may be, but that doesn't mean they'll have it by 2010. I'd be surprised to see them in the dealer lots by 2015. 2020 might even be wishful thinking.There's too much money to be made in Oil, and no matter what anyone says, the profit potential for Hydrogen - or any alternative fuel type for that matter - is just too big an unknown for any company focused on the bottom line to be bothered. The only exceptions are essentially glorified skunkworks projects or "We're doing that too" soundbyte generato

Hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism, not an energy source (unless you're talking about fusion;) ).

What is it that hydrogen brings to the automobile that makes people want it so much (apart from hype)? A few things.

One, hydrogen vehicles are electric vehicles; thus, regenerative braking and other efficiency issues become much simpler. Two, the fuel is easy to come by (if gasoline were to dissapear, we'd have to use ethanol**) and can be made disjoint from the petroleum industry (relying on grid power), although inefficient by most means of production (for example, generating electricity, then performing electrolysis). Three, the efficiencies of using hydrogen are very high - 70-80% or so; if you produce your hydrogen efficiently (say, from nuclear power thermolysis), you have an overall extremely efficient fuel cycle.

** - To preemptively head off this tinder box before it ignites, ethanol is A) not a net negative energy balance, and B) even if it was, it wouldn't matter. As for (A), only Pimentol (and those he works with) claim this, and his numbers are extremely questionable (relying on archaic conversion efficiency numbers, making unreasonable assumptions about fertilizer and irrigation, etc - I can get into this more if need be). Essentially everyone else who has studied the issue comes up with a very positive energy balance. As for (B), even if it was negative, that's irrelevant. The Nazis turned coal to oil extremely inefficiently, burning far more coal to power it than they produced oil's worth of energy, and yet it drove the Nazi war machine. Most ethanol production today uses natural gas, but that's just because it's currently cheap. If it wasn't, they could use coal heat, nuclear heat, any waste power plant heat - they could even burn ag waste. You're turning something that you can't put into your gas tank into something that you can.

That is blatantly false. For one thing, GMC is a division of GM. For another, if you actually researched you'd find that GM is footing the largest part of the hydrogen fuel cell research. Honda is busy putting cars out and getting PR, GM is busy investing money in figuring out how to deliver hydrogen to the world efficiently.

Also it should be mentioned that the oil industry owns stock in these American automobile companies so they have a financial incentive to create gas guzzlers.

I don't know about this first-hand, but given the track record of your post I wouldn't take only your word for it.

If the fuel tank were to rupture and explode, it would actually be less dangerous than your current gas tank rupturing and exploding. Plus, the tanks are designed not only to resist puncturing, but to keep hydrogen gas from entering the passenger compartment in the event of a rupture. Numerous real-world tests have been conducted that show these hydrogen cars will perform at least as well as gasoline cars in a high-speed collision.

The Hindenburg went up so fast because the canvas was treated with substances that also happen to be used in rocket fuel. Even so, the passenger compartment itself was unharmed and the passengers survived.

I beg to differ on the subject of the cause of the Hindenburg disaster. If you read the Wiki Article [wikipedia.org] on the subject or look at any number of other [colorado.edu] scientific articles [sas.org] you can see that all though it is possible that the skin of the airship was involved it was the flamable properties of the hydrogen gas that caused the fire to burn as quickly as it did.

You are correct however about the death toll on the passengers. From the Wiki:

Contrary to popular belief, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of a total of 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew died. Also killed was one member of the ground crew, Navy Linesman Allen Hagaman. Most deaths did not arise from the fire, but were suffered by those who leapt from the burning ship. (The lighter-than-air fire burned overhead.) Those passengers who rode the ship on its gentle descent to the ground escaped unharmed.

Nothing will explode a la Hindenburg unless it's painted with rocket fuel a la Hindenburg. Pure hydrogen doesn't explode very well (just like gasoline) because you have to get enough oxygen to it fast enough. Hindenburg had the benefit of being painted with a nice solid rocket oxidizer that releases oxygen when it gets hot.

The hindenburg was painted in cellulose acetate (relatively fire resistant - it took Bain a bloody jacob's ladder, at the right angle at that, to ignite it, and it burned itself out (the very reason why there is so much Hindeburg skin left in the hands of collectors), not cellulose nitrate (somewhat explosive, and occasionally used as a rocket fuel). Its coating isn't thermite, either (the ratio is backwards, and the layers were separated, not mixed as required by thermine, plus coated in a binder). Even if it was painted in rocket fuel, that wouldn't be an explanation either - rocket fuels combust relatively slowly.

Stop and think for a minute here: Hindenburg, like most derrigables at the time, had been struck by lightning several times in the past, and had large holes burned in the skin by it. If the skin was so flammable, why didn't it (and other craft) catch on the first bolt, instead of only when it (and others that burned) were venting hydrogen? Only when the hydrogen was mixed in stochiometric ratios did it (and others go up).

I could easily go on here. The fact that completely differently constructed WWI blimps (with different materials in the skin) burned in exactly the same fashion (the outer skin acts like a glow lamp to the inner hydrogen, which slowly burns from sucked-in oxygen). The fact that the combustion can be visibly seen in the pictures burning along cell lines [altfrankfurt.com], despite the fact that the skin was continuous across cells. Etc. I suggest you read up on the subject - the Addison Bain Incendiary Paint theory has been widely debunked.

The Hindenburg did not explode so no. Now could the tank rupture and burn well yes, but so can a gas tank. However due to how gas tanks are constructed and where they are located it's not an use compared to say being in the car as it hit's a brick wall at 75MPH or being in the car as someone is shooting at the tank. As to worrying about a ruptured hydrogen tank if you stop and think about it hydrogen is light so unlike a gas tank you not going to end up with a pool of the stuff if there is a hole in the t

Well the fun thing is that car companies are suppose to provide safety information to fire dept about these new cars. All the companies have made pledges to train and provide information to fire dept across the country of how to properly handle the new hybrid cars. (info is available on their websites, but they also are offering training classes) Its not so much the crash and burn that is the risk, but the crash and you have someone trapped in side. Cutting appart a car with such high voltage running thr

From TFASpallino was at the wheel of his silver Honda FCX, a car worth about $1 million that looks like a cross between a compact - say, a Volkswagen Golf - and a cinder block.For that sort of cash I'd like to get more that than a Volksie Golf, at least a Passat.

Since 61% of all electricity in California is produced using fossil fuel how is this really helping us right now?Only 28% of the electricity is created using nuclear or hydro power sources.So if more and more people start driving electric cars in California we'll have to burn even more fossils and quite a bit of it is the good old polluter named coal.

Not that I have anything against a better car runs on renewable energy, but I think it would be better to start with creating more electricity that doesn't come from fossils.

-- Sir! I'm only telling you once, step down from the soap box. This is your last warning...

We hear this argument on Slashdot every time this is brought up, and every time it's equally wrong: electricity is produced by many means, many of them renewable or non-polluting, like nuclear energy. Furthermore, natural gas creates less CO2 than gasoline or diesel. Also, and very importantly, producing electrical energy in any powerplant, is much more efficient than transforming the thermal energy into motion, in cars.Finally, it is relatively easy to shift the source of electrical energy from carbon to nuclear and perhaps solar and wind. It is IMPOSSIBLE to do that if cars stay the same, i.e. gasoline-based.

Moving from gasoline to fuel cell is an enabler, it allows for a shift from polluting to non-polluting technology. If you don't have that enabler, you will never be able to do the shift.

In addition, it lets you shift from a dependency on oil to a variety of other fuels: coal, wind, hydro, etc. Even if it isn't cost-effective in terms of miles per dollar, there are externalities to take into account:

* The price of the occasional war* The price of terrorism sponsored by some OPEC states* The price of dependency on oil importing stations (e.g. New Orleans)

Really, I'm not trying to start a flame war here over the necessity of the Iraq war or to cast blame on any state in particular. But if the US reduces its dependency on a fossil fuel from a very volatile region it may do more good than just the immediate environmental and economic effects.

Also, and very importantly, producing electrical energy in any powerplant, is much more efficient than transforming the thermal energy into motion, in cars.

Do you have some numbers to support this? Because I'm not sure it's true. Sure, the turbines in power plants are more efficient than the piston-based automobile engines, but in a power plant you go through two conversions, from potential to kinetic and then from kinetic to electrical, and there is a significant loss in the second stage, too. Not onl

The better way to put it is that Hydrogen can come from electricity. The are are other sources of Hydrogen and electrolysing water is actually very inefficient. The more common and less costly method and easier to do on a large scale is exctracting it from coal. USA has immense coal reserves. The only byproduct of Hydrogen production from coal is carbon dioxide.

Because all the CO2 that is produced from this is produce in bulk quantities at a central location, rather than by millions of individual automobiles, it is practical to collect the CO2 and pump it back into the ground. On top of that, pumping CO2 into an oil reserve reduced the viscosity of the oil, allowing it to be pumped at a greater rate, creating an economic benefit and our foreign oil dependency is reduced in two different ways.

So, the benefits are both in the environment, the economy, and in national security.

Sure current Fuel cells require a lot and advancements in the technology may reduce the amount needed but this will just spin it out a bit - it will only be decades at the most.So we will have to change everything again if Hydrogen is adopted.Why not Biodiesel? A Carbon Neutral technology that requires little change to the current Infrastructure and will work with current Diesel engines.Hydrogen for cars is clearly a dead duck, why then is it being foisted upon us ?

BMW [bmwworld.com] and others [energyinde...ncenow.org] offer engines and conversion packages to make dual-fuel vehicles using internal combustion engines that work on both hydrogen and gasoline. The fuel cell vehicle has the potential to be more energy efficient, but over the next few decades, if hydrogen catches on, I think the vast majority of hydrogen-technology users will NOT be using expensive and new fuel-cell technology. They'll be using fairly normal cars (maybe even the cars they have now) with dual-fuel engines that don't require any more platinum than they do now (and if the hydrogen infrastructure grows to the extent that we can stop burning gasoline, they won't need any at all -- no more pesky catalytic converters).
In the very long run, if America can finally get off the idea of having a separate car for every individual on the road, we will solve both the fuels problem and the platinum-availability problem. I don't see platinum as a limiting factor at all.

Until you have a clean, renewable source of hydrogen you haven't solved any problem at all by building a hydrogen fuelled car. You've only moved the pollution source, and likely lost energy in the conversion and transportation.

This is good news. About 60% of the petroleum used in the US goes into transportation, with gasoline owning the lion's share. This while the oil market remains tense and the refinery capacity close to 100% utilization.

So if even a small fraction of US cars convert to another energy source, this would considerably lower the strain on the gasoline supply chain and probably lower the oil price -- at least until OPEP tightens the supply.

Naturally, you need that other energy source. If all you do is generate H2 from oil (or natural gas), then you accomplish nothing. You need nuclear power plants. They are not cheap (at almost $2 per watt, they are more expensive than natural gas plant), but they are considerably cheaper than solar arrays ($5/Watt), and they operate 24 hours a day whereas solar plants don't (a solar plant would need triple generating capacity and energy storage to be able to supply electricity at night -- generate 3x the energy during the day, store it, release 1x the energy at night, roughly).

More nuclear power plants would allow emerging countries to bootstrap their economy faster. Costly oil is really harming them right now. Mundane things like irrigation programs require pumps that run on electricity, which itself comes from oil. Expensive oil means no pumps, no irrigation, no crop.

So next time you meet a well-fed person opposing nuclear power, remind him/her that because of this attitude, millions of people are starving and rotting in abject poverty.

Re nuclear waste: yes, there are problems. But even coal-burning power plant create nuclear waste of their own, namely,
thorium and uranium rejects [ornl.gov]. These don't cause any kind of alarm because of sheer ignorance, and the coal lobbies aren't going to raise this issue.

The French and the Dutch reprocess their nuclear waste and convert the waste's plutonium into short-life radionucleides. The technology exists. It's there, it's working, it's available for licensing.

Honda is one of the companies furthest behind in fuel cell technology among the majors. For example, DaimlerChrysler (really just Mercedes back then), has had fuel-cell buses for sale to European customers since late in 2000. These days, GM seems to be the furthest ahead.

Charge them $500 a month to have the car blow up upon impact and kill the whole family.

Now there's a line of hyperbole if I've ever heard it. I imagine that they've done crash tests on this car to determine the exact dangers of this happening. At the very least, I've seen the early crash tests done to decide if hydrogen was feasible or not. The result of the tests was that *if* the hydrogen were to ignite, its direction (up) would be safe as long as the passengers weren't sitting on it. It actually ended up

It was a joke. Obviously they're at the point where the car is safe enough to be TEST drove by living humans. So I should hope they're past the point where the car blows up upon impact. But I found it ironic that someone might pay to be a guinea pig and find out in a real-world situation.

I don't know how unsafe the car is, but I do question the legality of it. State gov'ts, particularly California, have stringent requirements for car safety. How does this pass the testing and registration requirements in order for it to be driven on the street? I know a non-production vehicle doesn't need to conform to the same standards, but it still can't pose a hazard to others. I'm not saying it's a rolling bomb, but does the state or the general public have any reassurance that this thing can surviv

What causes a fire in an automotive accident? Faulty gas tanks and fuel lines. This results in leakage. The vapors (which are MUCH heavier than hydrogen) then get sparked by something. This ignites the vapors, leading back to the fuel tank which then catches fire. I've witnessed car fires before (a few months ago, a car in the parking lot of my apartment complex caught fire). The fire burned for 10 minutes before fire response arrived. In that time, the fire spread from one car to the two cars on either side. It took fire response about five minutes to put the fires out. During this 15 minute time period, the materials that were burning included the interior of the car, under the hood, and the tires. The only violent explosions that occurred were the tires exploding.

I'm theorizing the reason the gas tanks didn't ignite is that gasoline requires a very oxygen rich environment. Gasoline requires a 1.4% - 7.6% concentration in air for it to be explosive. Any less than this and it will merely ignite; any more than this and there isn't enough oxygen for it to explode. It will simply ignite. The pre-existing fire probably used up most of the oxygen near the fuel lines. There was probably a phenomenon similar to what you see with an oil well - a jet of flame from the fuel line. Hollywood car explosions just don't happen.

Now, on to hydrogen.

Hydrogen, being much lighter than air (as opposed to natural gas or gasoline vapors), dissipates very quickly in air. At concentrations of less than 10%, it would require the same ammount of energy to ignite as would natural gas. The main point here, is that hydrogen dissipates so quickly that the concentration would very quickly reach less than 4% (the lower limit of explosivity). The likelyhood of explosions is much less likely than with even gasoline because of this.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells do not use any sparking or arcing componants. Similarly, the engine is a simple electronic engine. If something shorted, it could spark - but there is no combustion inherent in a fuel cell car. This limits the chances of even igniting the hydrogen in the case of a leak.

Fuel cells are also equipped with automatic shutoffs in case a leak is detected. This can't help if the storage tank itself is ruptured, but that would be difficult (Normal air tanks for scuba divers are very difficult to rupture, and tanks used to transport flamable liquid are even more difficult to rupture).

The myth of the exploding hydrogen car can be linked to two things: the hindenberg and the hydrogen bomb.

The hindenberg burned, rather than exploded. The color of the flame was wrong for hydrogen to be the propellant. It's very likely that it was the flamable fabric covering the zeppelin that ignited, not a leaking hydrogen tank.

A hydrogen bomb requires special isotopes of H2, and very high temperatures. Neither of which would be found in a car fire or a hydrogen fuel cell car.

You should not have to modify a reasonably modern diesel engine to run biodiesel. Volkswagon's TDI engine can run straight biodiesel (or a blend of bio and petro, which is MUCH more commonly available) straight from the factory. If they put that engine in a Cabrio from the mid to late 90s, it should burn biodiesel just fine with no mods. The hard part is finding the reasonably-priced VW TDI...

I've found that the best engines for running on biodiesel are the Peugeot XUD engines. You get them in some Volvos, Renaults, Citroëns, Dacia and of course Peugeots. Ideally you want one with a Bosch fuel pump - the Lucas ones don't last nearly as long, for some reason. Failing that, find a diesel VW Golf or Passat.

Basically you are looking for any late 80s-to-mid-90s European diesel, preferably with the Bosch pump.

Diesel's release more Carbons per gallon then Gas. But Diesel engines are a good deal more efficient then and can provide greater power at a lower rate of consumption. So at the end of the day the amount of carbons released from a Golf TDI will be lower then that of a Honda Accord.

Environmental benefits in comparison to petroleum based fuels include:

* Biodiesel reduces emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by approximately 50% and carbon dioxide by 78.45% on a net lifecycle basis because the carbon in biodiesel emissions is recycled from carbon that was already in the atmosphere, rather than being new carbon from petroleum that was sequestered in the earth's crust. (Sheehan, 1998)

two things...1) WHere do you think we will be getting the energy for hydrogen seperation?

2) How many wars have started directly because of oil supply? ANd what is the death toll for these wars as opposed to the more traditional "agression" wars?

Honestly, the wars for oil have contributed very little to the death toll due to violence in our history (even modern history). And fuel cells does not remove our dependence form oil until we can power hydrogen purification plants using wind, solar, or nuclear powe

The slashdot article summary ("apparently the first fuel-cell car on the road anywhere in the world") is just wrong.

An article on the Honda site [honda.com] says "In December 2002, the city of Los Angeles began leasing the first of five Honda FCXs, which are now used in normal, everyday activities by city officials."... "While the 2005 Honda FCX is our second-generation fuel cell vehicle (FCV), it is the first to be powered by a Honda designed and manufactured fuel cell stack."

So this is a meaningful trial and a significant step but it is far from the "first fuel-cell car on the road".

But what alternatives are there to fuel cells, when the oil runs out? Artificial petroleum, maybe?

Well the easiest (and that is a very relative term) are ethanol or biodiesel. Both are liquid fuels, meaning our entire infrastructure designed for handling liquids doesn't need to be replaced (gas pumps, tanker trucks, pipelines, etc.). They are carbon neutral, meaning the carbon released during combustion is the same carbon that the original plants absorbed as they grew (ie no net carbon increase in the

Very wrong. A pure electric car properly designed works very VERY well for the average city commuter. It's simply that americans dont want a single seater commuter but to drive an escalade XL with 3rd axle and 8 more inches of width for that all american vision blockage of the other drivers.having an efficient vehicle that can do 70mph for highway driving is not desired by the typical american even though it will work perfectly fine and have enough charge to return home with spare capacity.

Biodiesel has a big flaw: the efficiency of the production method.1) Plants aren't that efficient at turning sunlight into energy. They don't really need to be for their purposes, and they ignore certain wavelengths (such as green) altogether.

2) Once you have the plant, you need to turn it into diesel. Again, this is highly inefficient.

3) Once you have diesel, you must turn it into energy. Combustion engines are less efficient than fuel cells or power plant turbines.

Biodiesel is a storage medium. It takes energy to produce it. What are they going to use? Nuclear, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, oil, or coal? Zero point energy [zpenergy.com] is the way to go.

Seriously, your argument is silly. Both hydrogen and biodiesel are energy storage mechanisms, and both require energy to produce.